Rocket Italian Reviews

It is a pretty good app compared with all the apps I have tried. Would like to purchase it, but there are a few concerns personally. Hope alphabet table will included in future. overall, I rate it a good language learning application. Will consider to get it.

Just completed Duolingo - learned a lot of vocabulary and got a crash course in grammar. However, I'm completely at a loss when attempting to make conversation. I can tell immediately that this course is the right next step after Duolingo.

I first bought this language program over a year a go, just for fun but though my own fault, I didn't really appreciate nor use it properly, hence no results.

Recently, my reasons for needing to speak Italian changed and as with all goals, when you have a big enough "why" you find a way instead of finding excuses and since restarting with a routine and discipline, I have to say, I now look forward to my daily sessions.

I have only needed to contact Customer service once over an issue with the voice recognition and the auto responder email states service will be four to five days which for me is way too long. that said, I can comment favourably on a number of other things; the structure, the layout, and even the voice recognition for the majority of the time. but there is one thing I really like a lot! In fact, because of this, I discovered something about myself I didn't realise was such a driver for me. The Leaderboard!

The platform awards points for learning and displays your position benchmarked against other members over various time frames, last 24 hours, 7 days and so on.

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I have tried a few different resources in starting out with Italian. I have to say that I am glad I completed Paul Noble's audio course before starting with this - as the pace of learning with Rocket is much faster. The downside is that I find the learning much less "sticky" - the audio lessons simply don't have enough structured repetition of material to make the words stay in your memory. I find a lot of the exercises pointless too - I really don't want to repeat "sto bene" or "ciao" 100 times - although the recording facility is useful (not much point in relying on the software to rate your pronunciation - it's actually more useful to listen to yourself back).

Having said that, the course is enjoyable, and it's nice that it uses contemporary subject matter as well as "real" Italian. I tried a few Pimsleur lessons too and that was really, really bad - very out of date, with some cringe-worthy material. Just awful.

I find the most useful lessons the non-audio ones , oddly enough. No one course is enough when you are learning a language - I supplement Rocket with Italian films, a fantastic audio resource which cost me 95 PENCE ! (Rilkey's 613 Italian dialogues) - reading Italian newspapers and short story books, Duolingo, and any opportunity I get to speak in real situations.

I'm not sure I would buy the advanced levels of the course - but I am enjoying using the first level partly as revision and partly to lean new things.

Rocket Italian is integral in my study of the language. I use several apps and online programs to vary my study and to avoid – as much as possible – hitting a study wall. Rocket Italian incorporates audio and text in a way that keeps it interesting.

Enjoying Rocket Italian. The flow of the lessons is good. Both the website and the iOS apps are quite good. There are some minor usability issues worth noting. 1. I can't find a way to speed up the recorded lessons which would be helpful for me as I have some background in the language so the early lessons could be moved through faster. 2. The flow of the testing on the web pages is a little confusing. Not clear when you've finished a section and when you haven't. As such, the badges don't appear as completed when I think I have done so. All that being said, I'm learning a lot and enjoying the product. Glad I bought it.

Overall Rocket Italian is a pretty good system. You get exposed to the language in a variety of ways and have some explanation as to why a particular pattern exists.

It does have the problem that there is only one correct answer for each thing. This of course ignores the fact that many things can be said in slightly different ways. As an example the phrase "She is angry" technically can be said as either "Lei è arrabbiata" OR "È arrabbiata" however the only accepted answer is "È arrabbiata". In other places an answer is only accepted if it has a he/she indicator.

There are also numerous places where the English phrase refers to you plural but for some strange reason they have not realized that _every_ place they do that needs some kind of indicator that they mean you plural rather than you singular since English only has 'you'.

Overall the issues with Rocket Italian aren't that big but they make it feel more like you are memorizing lines in another language rather than learning another language. The dialogues are the worst for this as they slowly take away more of the words you are supposed to say but you have to say the phrase word for word to get it right even though there are times when you could get the same meaning across with slightly different words. (They really should package the dialogue portion so that it can be used by actors memorizing lines as that is what it does.)

Unlike Rosetta stone this teaches you things you can actually use and provides actual instruction. There is a good mixture of interactive audio lessons, activities, flash cards, review and more. It's nice to hear a native speaker and a non native (American) one too. I enjoy that this include some cultural pointers too. I can avoid ordering the wrong type of coffee for the wrong time of day! The mobile app seems a bit unresponsive. This has led me to doing most things on my Mac and listening to the audio portion on my iPhone on the way to work. I took a couple of years of Italian in college and this is a good way to learn all I forgot. It's helpful to have an explanation of some of the literal phases. Overall, great product for the money.

The best part that I like is learning the correct pronunciation, and this course is very good for that.
After listening and repeating a few times I know that I have improved a lot in a few days, although there is a long way to go.

Its a fun way to learn and you learn a lot of vocabulary very quickly. Reviewing previous lessons as you go is a great way of ensuring that everything sticks in memory as much as possible, especially if there is a longer period of time between the lessons. Some of the sentences are rather on the long side to take in and some words it would be nice to see spelt out as you can't always pick it up straight away but overall a very good course.